Advani against government's choice for CIC

The government of India wants to appoint information commissioner M A Ansari as the next Chief Information Commisoner (CIC) after Wajahat Habibullah’s acceptance of the J&K state information commissioner’s post.

It has been learnt that leader of Opposition L K Advani, is against government’s choice. The selection of a consensus candidate will be hold at a meeting after Prime minister Manmohan Singh returns from his US trip.The PM arranged a meeting before his US trip last week to decide on CIC, which was attended by Advani, law minister Veerappa Moily and minister of state in PMO Prithviraj Chavan. Central government put names of the two serving information commissioners forward for the post of CIC. They are M A Ansari and A N Tiwari. Among these two, ruling party is more keen to appoint M A Ansari.
 
According to the sources, Advani has objection to both of the names and said that he would abstain from voting if government went ahead with any of these. This would be embarrassing for central government.

The PM wants to have a consensus candidate in place and that's the reason government is taking time to take the decision and has been discussing the matter with opposition leader. The PM also accepted Advani's suggestion to make a list of  suitable candidates for the post so that new CIC could be chosen from them at the meeting

It is learnt that Advani has no objections to names of retired IPS officer Kiran Bedi or RTI activist Shekhar Singh, whose names has been taken by many people for the post.

It has been decided that Moily will consult senior BJP leader Arun Jaitley to shortlist a panel of names which could be considered at the meeting